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Monday, February 1, 2010

Mexican Police Find Headless Bodies

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico -- Mexican police on Saturday found two severed heads near blanket-wrapped bodies in a border city where 15 people have been killed in less than 24 hours.

The killings in Ciudad Juarez marked a resurgence in violence in the drug cartel-plagued city which had enjoyed a few days of relative calm.

The violence started Friday when a group of rifle-bearing attackers opened fire on a family in a truck, killing a man, a woman and injuring a 5-month-old baby.

A woman was later killed inside an ice cream parlor, a chase through the Galeana neighborhood left two dead, and a man was killed and a pregnant woman was injured in a spray of bullets in another part of town.
Six more people were killed later Friday in four different locations, and when dawn broke the two decapitated bodies were found. Later, an attack in a city park killed one man and injured three others.

In another hotspot of drug violence, the western Mexico state of Michoacan, authorities on Friday found the decapitated bodies of six men, and a group of at least a dozen armed men attacked a federal police convoy, killing five officers and wounding seven.

A judge, a governor's aide and a handful of other Mexican public officials were released Saturday from a Michoacan jail where they were being held for alleged ties to organized crime.

Prosecutors said there wasn't enough evidence to hold the 12 men -- among 31 former officials arrested in Michoacan last year. The men walked out of the prison before dawn Saturday and were met by relatives in waiting cars.

More than 15,000 people have been killed in drug cartel-related attacks in the past three years in Mexico.